Literary and cultural links between India and Southeast Asia are submerged in
the folds of time. There is a long history of literary and cultural transmissions between
India and Southeast Asia through maritime and trade routes that brought almost the entire
region under direct or indirect Indian influence. Literary and cultural influence of India is
visible in Java, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The most important literary
influences of India on Southeast Asia are Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata. Rama of the
Indian epic Rāmāyana, is the source of many literary works and cultural formations in
this region, in the same way there are Malay versions of the Mahābhārata, some of which
probably entered Malay as abbreviated prose renditions of the Old Javanese
Bhratayuddha. The earliest, Hikayat Perang Pandawa Jaya, ‘The tale of the war of the
victorious Pandawa’, was composed sometime between the late 14th and early 16th
century, and is mentioned in the Bustan al-salatin of Nuruddin al-Raniri composed in
Aceh in 1638.
This research will study how the transmission of the epics of Rāmāyana and
Mahābhārata from India to other parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia transformed the
literary and cultural production in this region and how the existing literatures and cultures
transformed these epics and led to numerous versions of these epics.